Four out of five parents can't answer GCSE questions

Four out of five parents are unable to answer typical GCSE questions on
subjects being studied by their teenage children, a survey suggests.

6:50PM GMT 08 Mar 2010

On average, 19.7 per cent gave the correct responses to questions taken from GCSE curricula for maths, science, history and geography.

The poll, of 500 parents of schoolchildren for Britannica Online, the online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica, found men scored better than women, answering on average 27.2 per cent of questions correctly compared with mothers who answered 12.1 per cent correctly.

Parents in East Anglia were statistically more able to answer questions correctly (31.7 per cent), compared with the South East (13.4 per cent), the South West (12.5 per cent) and the North (11.2 per cent).

Questions included the number of chromosomes in a body cell (46), the name of the first Labour prime minister (Ramsay MacDonald) and the name of the unit of force (Newton).

The most difficult of the 10 questions appeared to be: "What is the name given to the lines on a synoptic chart?" to which 13 per cent of those polled gave the correct answer of "isobars".

This compared with more than a third (34 per cent) who knew that "mode" was the measure of average which could have more than one value.

Ian Grant, managing director of Encyclopaedia Britannica (UK) Ltd, said that parents may be keen to help their children with their homework but were not necessarily well qualified.

"The content of the national curriculum has changed over the years so parents may be less familiar with some of the subjects now being studied," he said.

"The best way parents can support their children is to provide fast and easy access to a source of accurate, reliable information, whenever it is needed, as well as making sure they are researching safely and responsibly."

Britannica Online has produced a free web guide for parents and students with tips on accessing information from the internet.